Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

Ling, San Li, Kai, the Old Cat, they must all come from exemplary class backgrounds, Zhuli realized. They had never been targeted and so, deep in their bones, did not believe they could be. They were free because, in their minds, they persisted in believing they were. Maybe they were right but Zhuli felt as if she were watching an oil drum that was about to explode.

“It was fate that you found us,” the Old Cat said. “Or, to put it another way, fate that I found you again.”

girls wearing red scarves,

fire,

“Down with Wu Bei!”

The girl with the broom handle was

accusing him of teaching literary works that mocked the reality of every man and woman standing before him.

Scrawled on the dunce cap were the words, “I am an enemy of the People, a spreader of lies! I am a demon!”

He was shoved but did not shove back. “What’s your name and work unit?” the same voice asked. “I’m only trying to get closer,” Sparrow said, terrified. The person laughed, disbelieving.

The man’s personal papers were being displayed like trophies

war. Someone was reading the titles of books and each one

was greeted with guffaws a...

They threw ever more books and papers onto the fire, and even furniture and clothing.

There, under the nearest one, he saw Zhuli, standing by herself, lost in thought. She stood out because she was the only motionless person in this crowd.

“Door by door,” Ba Lute said softly. “They are going to every house.”

Zhuli had moved halfway into the cold room. “But, uncle, you’re a Party member…” Sparrow almost said, “So is Wu Bei,” but when he saw his father’s face he said nothing. “If it comes to unending revolution,” Ba Lute said, “even Party members and heroes must take their turn.”

“In everything, I trust the Party. I trust Chairman Mao. But no, no. I never wanted this.”

“This campaign is beginning very fiercely,”

“Actually, someone denounced you, Sparrow. I saw it myself.”

“The entire faculty was denounced. They can’t...

In another couple of months, she would turn fifteen

But Sparrow, this symphony of yours, it helps me remember what music is. This symphony is the most honest thing you’ve ever written and it makes me afraid for you.”

out of nowhere, I was surrounded by my classmates. They said that I must now come down to their level.

Tofu hadn’t been there, I might have been in real trouble.”

Last night they went to Tofu Liu’s house. You know him, don’t you? So gentle he can hardly turn a page. They went through his house, beat his parents, smashed the furniture. All the musical instruments…his father is a rightist. Accused in 1958, the same year as my father.”

Sparrow, do you know that Kai is a Red Guard now? I heard…he led the attack on Tofu Liu’s parents–”

“Tofu Liu saw him. And Kai was there at the Conservatory, when my classmates surrounded me.”

Yesterday afternoon, her classmates had stared at her with contempt, as if she were a traitor. The change had seemed to happen in a moment. Or maybe, she thought, the feeling had been inside them all along, but she had not understood it until she saw it in Kai’s expression.

The children of class enemies are the enemies of the People! This daughter of a rightist is a dirty whore!

Her parents, meanwhile, the convicted traitors, had never implicated or denounced anyone.

Sparrow could not help but notice how Zhuli clutched her violin. He had an image of Wen the Dreamer, holding the battered suitcase, names sliding out like bits of clothing.

Room 103 struck her, for the first time, as an echo of the underground library.

Every building was shrouded in red banners.

“Denounce the…” “Destroy the…” “Rise up and…eradicate…shame.”

In her mind, Prokofiev’s libretto kept repeating: The philosophers have tried in different ways to explain the world; the point is to change it. Prokofiev quoted Marx, the Red Guards quoted Chairman Mao, everyone shouted borrowed ideas, her classmates memorized the Chairman’s slogans and adopted his poetry as their own.

She saw a woman being pulled from the lineup. The woman was her mother’s age. A Red Guard, a tall, spindly girl, was pushing down on the back

of the woman’s neck as if the woman were an ox.

Young people were ransacking the distribution warehouse, even pulling out the workers.

Someone said, “Oh, this is the violinist. The stuck-up bitch whose father is a counter-revolutionary.”

was the one who opened Old West’s library,” Zhuli thought, beginning to lose consciousness. “It was my mistake and it is destroying my parents’ lives. Every slap, kick and humiliation that I receive is one less for my mother. What am I inside? What is it they finally see?”

“Yes, Zhuli,” he said. “The Red Guards have all gone now.”

two of the women targeted in the struggle session were still on the road, they were dead.

Red Guards came to the house.

In the next existence, Zhuli decided, there would be more colours than in the human world, there would be more textures and varieties of time.

One of her ears had been damaged.

Da Shan and Flying Bear had been forced to criticize Zhuli, Swirl and Wen the Dreamer, and these denunciations would be pasted up in the morning. “Call her the daughter of rightist filth,” Ba Lute had instructed. “You have to. Just write it down. Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing, only words.”

Ba Lute had now been summoned to the Conservatory twice, where the struggle sessions had lasted a full twelve hours. Their neighbour, Mr. Ma, had disappeared, and so had Zhuli’s teacher, Tan Hong.

Twice, Sparrow had been taken away by a group of Red Guards.

His father had said the violence was most extreme at the universities.

With her hair cut off, she looked even younger than she was. “It’s okay,” she said. “You can go back to sleep.” “I wasn’t sleeping.” He sat up in his chair, rubbed his face, pushing his uneasy dreams away. “No, I was only thinking.” “I’m fine now, and I know when you’re telling fibs.” He smiled. One hand drifted up to the opposite arm, rising to her shoulder, finding the ends of her hair. “Six months,” Zhuli said in a low voice, “and everything will grow back.” She gazed at him, and the dark smudges on her face, the bruising which had turned a sickly yellow, made her appear shadowed despite the sunlight in the room.